At OL Park,
To judge the level of seriousness of Rennes’ bad series (ten defeats in all competitions since the end of December), it is enough to be surprised to see Olivier Cloarec emerge from the shadows. Very discreet since taking office in May 2022, the president of Stade Rennais appeared with cold anger this Sunday in the spans of Parc OL. “It’s lamentable to present a face like that, he immediately let go. We had a catastrophic second period in which we conceded three goals. It’s scandalous and far from the values of Stade Rennais. We are all responsible. »
An hour earlier, his club was shattered against Olympique Lyonnais, however adrift in the first period (0-1 thanks to a goal from Amine Gouiri), before he took advantage of Breton apathy to overthrow a meeting for the first time in over a year (3-1). Captain Hamari Traoré also ranted: “We put the Lyonnais under pressure at the start and we should have killed the match. Then we didn’t offer anything more, it’s worrying. I can’t understand how we manage to thwart like that”.
“We lost the thread of what made our strength”
Sixth, two lengths behind Losc (5th), Stade Rennais missed a golden opportunity to get back into the race for the Europa League Conference, the only European Cup that the club can still really aim for (Monaco now has eight points advance for the Europa League). Elected best coach in Ligue 1 last season, and on the championship podium after fifteen days and the truce of the World Cup in Qatar, Bruno Genesio is clearly in trouble in 2023 with a group it is true cut off from his best player Martin Terrier (9 goals and 4 assists in L1), victim of a serious knee injury. “We cannot only explain our poor performance since the return of the World Cup by that, repeated this Sunday the former Lyon coach. We also lost the thread of what made our strength, namely the beautiful game, the movement, the technical quality, and also the values of collective, cohesion, which have been scattered a little for some time. »
We were treated to a symbolic melodrama of his questionable management on the return phase, during a second period which he himself described as “pathetic”. In the 69th minute of play, while the VAR hesitated to validate the second goal of Alexandre Lacazette, who started at the limit of offside, Bruno Genesio chose to launch his promising striker Désiré Doué (3 goals and 1 assist in the Ligue 1).
“There are things that need to be assimilated more quickly”
If the 17-year-old player, who entered the game at the same time as Flavien Tait and Jérémy Doku, has not really had an impact on the Rennes game, we were curious to see him associated with his brother Guéla Doué (20 years old ), when he was about to make his appearance, three minutes from the end of regulation time. Except that there, huge surprise, Guéla replaces his younger brother, uninjured and dumbfounded to leave after only eighteen minutes spent on the lawn of the Parc OL. Désiré Doué, who spun off the pitch without even looking at his coach, will he easily recover from this significant penalty?
“It’s between him and me, I don’t have to explain it,” Bruno Genesio briefly replied on the subject at a press conference. At the microphone of Prime Video, he said more about the reason for this episode which is really not common, apart from injury or tactical reorganization following the expulsion of a player: “There are things that must be assimilated quickly . When you have to say something twice, it’s already once too many. So when it repeats itself three or four times, you have to use other methods. That does not prevent me from having enormous confidence in him and that he will have a very good career, but there are things that you have to assimilate more quickly”. Can stinging a 17-year-old kid like this be a good strategy at the end of the season that got off to a bad start (4 points out of 15 taken for a month)? Not sure that the Breton supporters, or even Olivier Cloarec, think so.